‘Ship Today, Update Tomorrow': The Modern Tablet Credo

The Kindle Fire has suffered from a clunky, sluggish UI since its launch. Photos by Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Of all the major hardware players, Amazon seemed best-equipped to battle Apple in the tablet market. Backed by Amazon’s massive resources, an online store full of content, and a very aggressive pricing strategy, the $200 Kindle Fire appealed to any consumer unwilling to spend $500 on an entry-level iPad 2.

Pre-orders were through the roof.

Unfortunately, the Fire didn’t deliver as expected. With a sluggish user interface, a poorly designed screen size for magazine viewing, and terrible performance in a browser that promised miracles, the Kindle Fire has left us rattled. Is this really the device that’s supposed to dethrone the iPad 2?

Amazon answered criticisms Monday with a solution that’s become increasingly more common for tablet manufacturers over the past year: the software update.

“In less than two weeks, we’re rolling out an over-the-air update to Kindle Fire that will improve performance, touch navigation, and give customers the option to choose what items display on the carousel,” an Amazon spokeswoman told Wired.com in a statement.

We’ll call it “ship today, update tomorrow.” The trend began earlier this year, when RIM first released its BlackBerry PlayBook tablet in April. After learning the PlayBook wouldn’t ship with native e-mail, contacts and calendar apps, we all but pronounced the device D.O.A. But RIM continually pledged a software update, along with all the promised apps in tow. Nearly nine months later, the update is nowhere to be seen.

RIM promised a lot with the PlayBook, but ultimately failed to deliver. Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Similarly, HP shipped its TouchPad with a number of performance issues, including a sluggish UI that often displays a “spinning wheel of death”-type icon when the user launches too many apps at once. HP also promised a series of updates that would improve performance — then, six weeks later, the company killed the tablet.

To be fair to these manufacturers, they’re a year behind Apple in the tablet arms race, and taking their sweet time isn’t exactly a luxury they can afford. The iPad beat everyone to market, capturing some 93 percent of the market in the third quarter of 2010. Today, the iPad still hovers somewhere in the 60 percent range as we close out 2011.

“The level of competition is increasing, while sales and product life cycles are decreasing,” Gartner analyst Phillip Redman said in an interview. “This puts a lot of pressure on companies to innovate quickly in order to compete.”

The problem is, when a manufacturer rushes a product to market, consumers often suffer the brunt. Whether it means cutting corners on user-experience testing, or fast-tracking hardware/software integration between the device and its OS, a quick rush to market is often self-defeating, leading to a speedy release of a half-baked product.

“The good thing is that [over the air] firmware updates make this possible,” said NPD analyst Benjamin Arnold in an interview. “But the bad news is that poor initial reviews can really hurt a product launch.”

What’s more, consumers generally aren’t buying the “ship today, update tomorrow” philosophy. RIM’s tablet tanked — the company claimed it shipped just 200,000 PlayBooks during the first quarter of the device’s release (and note that “shipped” does not necessarily mean “sold”). Compare that to Apple’s iPad sales that quarter, a reported 9.25 million units. And of course HP’s now discontinued TouchPad obviously went down in flames.

The now discontinued TouchPad. May it rest in peace. Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Unlike RIM and HP, however, Amazon looks like it’s escaping any real punitive damages of consumer criticism. For one thing, the Kindle Fire costs only $200, a far cry from the $500 starting points of many competitors. “With the Motorola Xoom at seven or eight hundred dollars, for instance, consumers expected a lot,” said Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps in a telephone interview. “At a price point like the Kindle Fire has, consumers are willing to be a lot more forgiving.”

And Amazon has another ace up its sleeve: An online ecosystem filled with content. The company currently hosts its own app store, a vast repository of MP3s, and more than a million different e-books for sale. Contrasted with RIM’s and HP’s meager app store offerings, Amazon’s digital environment is flourishing. “It works when you turn it on,” says Rotman Epps, “and there’s tons of content on it to use. That’s what people want.”

To be sure, while the Fire doesn’t perform very well in one’s hand, it seems to be doing well in terms of sales. While Amazon won’t share specific numbers (it never does), the company has taken to promote the tablet as “the most successful product we’ve ever launched,” having sold “millions of units” since its launch in November. Further, the company says it’s continuing to build “more to meet the strong demand,” according to an Amazon spokeswoman.

Still, other manufacturers seem to have found the sweet spot in pricing strategies, with product price tags hovering around the $200 range. If competition increases on the low-end, glitchy product releases followed by apologetic software updates may no longer cut it.

Indeed, Amazon may be preparing for as much. The company is reportedly working on a more capable version of the Fire to come the spring, according to The New York Times (Amazon declines to confirm or deny this development).

Perhaps the next credo for tablets will be “ship the first tablet today, ship the sequel tomorrow.”